By Kenneth Magnus and Wayne McLaughlin, Contributors 
ALTHOUGH THE word biotechnology is relatively new, the area of human endeavour that it covers is not. Humans have produced wines, bread, vinegar and cheeses for a very long time and in Jamaica the production of rum is centuries old.
The name give away the area of endeavour that it covers biological technology or technology based on biology and includes any technique that uses living systems or parts thereof or substances from those systems to make or modify a product, improve plants or animals, or develop microorganisms for specific uses. Production of the commodities listed may be considered to be the beginning of biotechnology.
In the development of more modern aspects of the science we may note the production of antibiotics and monoclonal antibodies (both useful in medicine), as well as the potential food source single-cell protein (in which Jamaica played its part through the old food yeast project at Frome). These are examples of the stage of biotechnology before the knowledge of the structure of genes began to drive the science of today's modern
biotechnology.
That intermediate stage in mankind's development of biotechnology can be exemplified by the changes that took place in rum production in which improved yeast strains (sometimes obtained from nature, sometimes treatment of yeast cells with certain chemicals or by radiation) were selected for improved rum production, and in which the equipment used (fermenters, stills and so on) was mordernised.
Biotechnology not only deals with microorganisms but as tissue culture with isolated cells from higher plants. Jamaica already has made beginnings in the development of this field of endeavour, in which asexual reproduction of cells from higher plants give rise to new plants.
Tissue culture development of a crop needs the collection of varieties, the selection of the most desirable than the application of tissue culture techniques. Jamaica has many desirable fruits that could appropriately be dealt with in this manner. Such plants as star apples, naseberries and various Anona species are a few of the possible export fruits.
Modern biotechnology is an outgrowth of modern scientific work on the chemical structure of the genes and the relationship of this structure to the properties of living things (for example, eye or skin colour or the presence of certain disease conditions in humans) leading to the modification of genetic structure in particular living things so that the properties we wish to change can in fact be changed.
- Kenneth Magnus, Professor Emeritus and Dr. Wayne McLaughlin, University of the West Indies.
